Legislation (Fees) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 12 September 2019.)

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (20:10): I rise to speak on the Legislation (Fees) Bill. On behalf of the opposition, I indicate that I am the lead speaker. As far as I am advised, this is a relatively simple and straightforward bill, which seeks to resolve a significant amount of red tape, which is required to be waded through by the government internally in providing for the annual incremental increase to a plethora of fees and charges which are levied on all manner of activities within the community each year. It is a significant undertaking for government.

You only need to look at the budget papers to realise that the levying of these fees and charges, as well as the sale of goods and services, tends to raise about $2.5 billion a year for the government, although of course that figure has noticeably increased this current financial year with the very significant increase to fees and charges in particular areas as the government continues its assault on household budgets and the costs of conducting small business here in South Australia.

But, in terms of the provisions of the bill, it is my understanding that moving from the current regime, where Treasury eagerly awaits the latest CPI data here in Adelaide and balances that against what they anticipate to be the annual indexation rate for public sector wages, to come up with a blended indexation amount for government fees and charges, the higher the better, of course, for Treasury, as that means they get to raise more revenue, but that certainly has not been the case in recent years. Once that figure is set, then of course the directive goes out to agencies to apply that to fees and charges, although of course in some instances there are necessary rounding provisions for ease of payment and receipt of those fees and charges.

Then the bulk of the work is left not just with Treasury and Finance for the coordination of all these efforts across the agencies but principally parliamentary counsel, which has the responsibility for drafting what is required to be, under the standing act that we have at the moment, the fee notices, which then make their way back up through the process to cabinet, to the Governor, and to be laid before both houses of parliament in here.

I am advised by the Attorney's office that this currently constitutes approximately half parliamentary counsel's annual task, which seems to be an extraordinary amount. I am surprised by that, not just because it has only been 18 months for us now in opposition and frantically asking parliamentary counsel to draft all manner of well-intentioned bills and amendments but also because of the work that the crossbench in both chambers tends to put parliamentary counsel to.

However, as I intimated before, there are many, many fees and charges—hundreds and hundreds of them—and it is a large amount of work for parliamentary counsel. Under the terms of this bill it enables the government to change that arrangement so that, after what I understand still to be a cabinet-mandated average indexation rate, for want of a better term, it will be the job of agencies rather than parliamentary counsel to go about drafting these fee notices, thereby alleviating this significant burden on parliamentary counsel.

The public should not notice too much difference in this, but, from the explanation that we have been provided, perhaps parliamentary counsel will, and that might be welcome for them. Hopefully, that does not lead to a reduction in parliamentary counsel staffing or resources, given the diminution of their workload in this regard. Otherwise, the opposition is more than happy to support this measure.

The only caveat that the opposition had about this bill is making sure that these fee notices were still laid before both houses of parliament and were disallowable instruments. My understanding, from the briefing that has been provided to me, is that clause 5 of the bill, in particular clause 5(4), still retains the requirement under the Subordinate Legislation Act for these fee notices to be laid before both houses of parliament and hence become disallowable instruments. In that way, while these taxes, fees and charges are able to be indexed by the government of the day, there is still the necessary parliamentary scrutiny and, if need be, control over the extent to which they have been increased.

We have seen very substantial increases in fees and charges, as I mentioned, and it is perhaps timely that the Minister for Environment and Water is here. We have had a 40 per cent increase in the solid waste levy, to be paid by residents from across South Australia, for a capital infrastructure project in a marginal Liberal seat, Colton, which—

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It benefits my seat, I'm told. Well, if you speak to the residents, for example—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. Speirs interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I have to say there might be a snapper ban, but it is still easy to throw a hook and a line out and to get it instantly caught in this state. You only need to bait the Minister for Environment and Water, and instantly there is a strike, and you are able to haul it in at your leisure.

But I must say that the benefit to my residents—well, let's look at the benefit to my residents. Let's look at the increase of hundreds of truck movements through the western suburbs as being a benefit. Is it? Well, that is not the contention of the residents of Tennyson, Semaphore Park, West Lakes Shore, West Lakes and Grange, depending on whether trucks stay on Military Road or head up West Lakes Boulevard.

Indeed, even in the former part of my electorate, on the southern part of Lefevre Peninsula, there is of course contention that now the government is proposing not just to run these hundreds of truck movements up one single, solitary side street between the Esplanade and Military Road in Semaphore; now that plan is apparently to be extended to three different streets. I look forward to making sure that we have the required heavy vehicle access notices consulted on and appropriately published before these truck movements begin to occur in the western suburbs.

Nonetheless, the minister has made the decision that the good burghers of Streaky Bay, Mount Gambier, Penola, Roxby Downs and Port Augusta all should be paying a higher level of tax on their solid waste so that this one, single, solitary capital project in a Liberal-held marginal metropolitan seat can be delivered.

I find that surprising for another reason, and that is that we heard that, despite the claims from the Minister for Transport that, despite all appearances, he has a mature relationship with the federal government, he has somehow secured billions of dollars of additional infrastructure funding. Yet, indeed, we can say that the vastly more mature Treasurer of South Australia—I mean that in years—had to go to Canberra last week to ask Josh Frydenberg not to spend money on capital infrastructure in the next 10 years but to spend it in the next three years here in South Australia to try to stimulate the local economy.

Perhaps the increase in the solid waste levy and the new sand carting regime which is being imposed on the residents of the western suburbs will in fact will be one infrastructure project that will be delivered by this government in the next three years to the exclusion of all others. It is unfortunately an infrastructure project in the western suburbs because there are not any other infrastructure projects in the western suburbs.

Of course, there was meant to be an extension of the Outer Harbor rail line to Port Adelaide, which was not only contracted and signed with a contractor on a fixed price contract, and not only had millions of dollars spent on it, but it was subsequently cancelled, and as compensation the Minister for Transport gave that company who had signed that contract to deliver that rail spur into Port Adelaide the exclusive access to the contract for the new tram stop at the intersection of Halifax Street, Sturt Street and King William Street. We look forward to the Auditor-General's next report on that procurement process. However, I digress.

As to fees and charges, of course we have had other significant fees and charges increase. These were put to the community by the Treasurer as being a government crackdown on speeding motorists. There were very significant increases in the levels of speeding fines to be levied by the government in the future, and this would send a clear message and deter speeding behaviour by South Australian motorists.

It raises quite a lot of money. It raises over $20 million, but you only have to access the publicly available expiation data from the government websites to work out that the real revenue raised is not actually through the speeding fines. Of that $20 million, over $18 million is projected to be raised not through speeding fines but through the massive increase in the corporate fee, from $300 to $1,500.

If you want to know who pays the corporate fee, there is a common misrepresentation made that the corporate fee is paid by nefarious businesses who want to hide the identity of drivers who have been caught using business fleet vehicles because, if those drivers were actually nominated and named, they would lose demerit points. Instead, there is some sort of arrangement between the driver and the small business that they choose to pay the corporate fee rather than nominate the driver and that driver suffer demerit points.

The reality of the situation is that there are many small to medium-sized businesses in South Australia that run fleet vehicles. Many of these businesses started out as sole trading enterprises and, through the hard work, determination and nous of those operators, those businesses have managed to grow. They might be delivery businesses. They might be tradie businesses where perhaps more than one plumber or electrician or so on is engaged and they are provided with a van to attend to jobs and so on.

It is those businesses that have grown to the extent where they have a fleet of vehicles—more than one vehicle registered in the business name of the company—that perhaps does not have the sophisticated fleet monitoring and vehicle tracking software that a larger delivery business like Toll or Linfox might have on its vehicle, which, when presented with a fine for the company for a speeding offence at a particular time on a particular road, can look at the vehicle information it has on its database and nominate the exact service and driver and hence ensure that that driver is held to account. That is not the situation with the vast majority of these people.

If you are wondering how many times this is going to happen, my understanding is that in the last financial year 12,000 offences were expiated with the attachment of this corporate fee. That is remarkable. There are cases, of course, where the corporate fee should be increased, and indeed the former Labor government did increase the corporate fee and did increase the corporate fee for speeding offences but on one particular problematic stretch of road, and that was the descent in the last parts of the South Eastern Freeway, where we had seen separate fatal accidents within a short period as well as two very significant near-miss incidents.

It comprised part of a comprehensive response to the Coroner's recommendations, which also included changing the infrastructure of the South Eastern Freeway; better line marking; better signage; clearing vegetation; making a public campaign more broadly available, indeed nationally available, about the use of safety ramps; and changing the name of arrester beds to safety ramps, which we were told was important as well. But that is not what this government is doing. This government is ramping up this corporate fee really to raise funds for the budget with no demonstrable road safety benefits.

Of course, we know that this is not the only effort by the government in pursuing road safety efficiencies that benefit the budget, because of course they wound up the Motor Accident Commission, which had the sole responsibility for promulgating road safety messages to the community. Not only have we had confirmation that since 1 December 2018 there has been no proactive public messaging from the Motor Accident Commission but it has also been over that period that we have had a dramatic escalation in our road toll.

We only need look in the Auditor-General's Report, which was tabled on Tuesday, to see that $670 million of additional taxes, fees and charges are being raised this year by the government. We are happy to support this bill. It does alleviate a burden of red tape from the government. It does free up parliamentary counsel so that the opposition and the crossbench can continue to concoct and have drafted all sorts of worthwhile amendments to government legislation, let alone draft our own bills, and the opposition is happy to lend its support to it.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (20:27): Again I find myself thanking the member for Lee for his contribution to this debate and his indication of support from the opposition for the passage of this bill.

To confirm, yes, parliamentary counsel will be relieved of a considerable amount of work. They have been the principal promoters of the reform in this area and not just so that the extraordinary amount of work done is not so burdensome. I think they undertake their work very diligently, but where there is a process that can be developed, in this case to have a notice procedure but with the protection, as set out in the new section 5, of ensuring that subordinate legislation obligations remain with the notice—namely, the obligation to table before both houses of parliament—that means that we protect the interests of the parliament in being able to review this matter just as we would have if they had remained under the regulatory regime. That is an important protection and, indeed, I do not think the government would have even considered presenting such an option.

I am not sure who introduced it, but I am aware of a process in the Department for Environment, where they have a rather novel way of issuing directives to the public other than by regulation. We can have legislation, we then have regulations and sometimes we have rules that might apply to courts, but in the Department for Environment they have this peculiar practice where they can publish a policy—on cleanliness of air and things of that nature. I found out only a few years ago that, having published this policy, it then has the effect of a regulation and you can be prosecuted under it. It is quite bizarre. Nevertheless, that is a power they have.

The poor, hapless person, who might not be trained in understanding all the Department for Environment rules and regulations, might read this policy, thinking, 'Well, this is interesting. This is something that's important for people to learn about and perhaps not just comply with but abide by,' only to find that in fact that any breaches of this type of policy can bring you into significant trouble.

What is important is that the public need to know that when we make laws in here they can be amended by this forum and, if ministers make regulations or any other process under them as an operation of government, similarly there needs to be a review process. That has been maintained and secured. I thank parliamentary counsel for bringing this matter to our attention. I think it will make sure that they are available to all members of parliament to undertake their other important work in the preparation of legislation. I thank the member for Lee for supporting the same. I commend the bill.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (20:31): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.